Oculus Rift Buyout Leads To Torrent Of Anger On Kickstarter

[Andy Chalk]

Oculus Rift Buyout Leads To Torrent Of Anger On Kickstarter

The Oculus Rift Kickstarter page is being flooded with negative comments from backers unhappy about yesterday's acquisition by Facebook.

The big news yesterday was Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/133231-Facebook-is-Buying-Oculus-VR-for-2-Billion-Update-4], the company behind the Oculus Rift headset, for two bazillion dollars - that's $400 million in cash and $1.6 billion in Facebook common stock. It was an utter surprise to virtually everyone, even those normally tuned in to such things; today's reaction to the deal among Oculus Rift Kickstarter backers, on the other hand, is really no surprise at all.

Notch, the creator of Minecraft, may be the most high-profile Oculus Rift backer to feel burned, but he's hardly alone. Dozens of comments have been posted on the Kickstarter page and while a few of them support the deal (or at least manage to force highly-cautious optimism), the vast majority are steadfastly against it.

"I would have NEVER given a single cent of my money to Oculus if I had known you were going to sell out to Facebook. You sold all of us out," one backer wrote. "I hope this backfires horribly for Oculus and Facebook. I will personally discourage absolutely anyone I know from buying what was once an indie dream and is now a soulless corporate cash cow."

"You selling out to Facebook is a disgrace. It damages not only your reputation, but the whole of crowdfunding. I cannot put into words how betrayed I feel by this," another said.

A number of backers also say they want their money back, although it's hard to say whether they intend to seriously pursue a refund - or what chance they'd have of actually getting one. It seems unlikely, although the suggestion that Oculus "could" or "should" offer some sort of compensation to backers on moral grounds is being bandied about as well.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen either, though, as Oculus VR co-founder Palmer Luckey is still selling the merits of the deal on Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/], where he said the acquisition will enable the company to "greatly lower" the price of the Rift and that he's "100% certain that most people will see why this is a good deal in the long term."

Source: Kickstarter [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/comments]


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[schrodinger]

This reaction was a given. Did anyone think most people would be ok to pour their money into the OR only to have Facebook to come out of nowhere like a smack to the face and scoop it up?
This has always been a downside of kickstarter, if you put money into a project there's no 100% guarantee the end result is what you funded for. Pretty sure people won't get a refund either, even if they are serious about it.

 

[Ratty]

I don't use facebook because they creep me out and I don't like to have their ads shoved in my face, and that's a free service. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to enable them to spy on me and shove ads in my face even more literally?

So glad I didn't fund this. I'd join all the people calling Carmack a POS for selling out, but I'm pretty sure for a billion dollars I would have sold out to.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

I don't use facebook because they creep me out and I don't like to have their ads shoved in my face, and that's a free service. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to enable them to shove ads in my face even more?

So glad I didn't fund this. I'd call Carmack a POS for selling out like this, but I'm pretty sure for 2 billion dollars I would have sold out to.

What makes you think John Carmack had anything to do with this?

 

[Ratty]

I don't use facebook because they creep me out and I don't like to have their ads shoved in my face, and that's a free service. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to enable them to shove ads in my face even more?

So glad I didn't fund this. I'd call Carmack a POS for selling out like this, but I'm pretty sure for 2 billion dollars I would have sold out to.

What makes you think John Carmack had anything to do with this?

He's not complaining about it https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack so I assume he was ok with the deal. And his name being attached was certainly what led a lot of people to donate to the Kickstarter.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

The question is whether or not this will hinder development of the actual technology.

I'm personally not a fan of the RIFT and highly doubt it will get anywhere in mainstream gaming due to it's sheer awkwardness and niche appeal, but I can respect attempts made into unexplored grounds (even if it's for giggles).

 

[Toadfish1]

Oh well.

All aboard the Morpheus train!

 

[rcs619]

I really think that Facebook overpaid for this. The Oculus is cool and all, but it isn't 2 billion dollars cool. Virtual reality sets like that are probably going to be a fairly common thing in the future, but the tech is at least 5 years of R&D away from being viable beyond a very small, niche audience, if not longer than that. They need to miniaturize the technology, make it cheaper, and figure out how to do compelling games on it (thins like EVE Valkyrie is a good first-step though) before it becomes a 2 billion dollar idea. In its current form, it's a very neat concept, and a pretty cool working prototype, but that's about it.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

yeah, i figured this would happen. i don't understand, why didn't oculus just go to facebook in the first place for its money? what seems to have happened here is that the crowdfunders essentially served as a corporate commercial, calling attention to the product so that it could be sold to a larger entity when it gained enough attention. i'd be pissed if i were one of the backers, and refunds on this ground should be mandatory to all who ask for one. they can certainly afford to offer refunds now.

 

[rofltehcat]

Kickstarter and comparable platforms need a contract clause for something like this.
I'd suggest that if a company gets "bought", it either pays out the backers (money back) or even gives them a small share.
Of course up to now they only have to provide the rewards but there needs to be something like this for future cases. So it wouldn't change anything for the Oculus but it'd change a little for future kickstarters.

Currently, backers are basically donators. I don't think they want to be considered as full investors but something in-between would be good, I think.

 

[Yuri Albuquerque]

I don't use facebook because they creep me out and I don't like to have their ads shoved in my face, and that's a free service. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to enable them to shove ads in my face even more?

So glad I didn't fund this. I'd call Carmack a POS for selling out like this, but I'm pretty sure for 2 billion dollars I would have sold out to.

What makes you think John Carmack had anything to do with this?

He's not complaining about it https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack so I assume he was ok with the deal. And his name being attached was certainly what led a lot of people to donate to the Kickstarter.

Carmack is just the CTO, he probably doesn't have much of a voice on this. Even if he did, this doesn't affect his job that much.

 

[RJ 17]

Well of course they're pissed off about this deal. Why the hell did they bother paying up with their own cash if some mega-corp like Facebook is just going to come in with $400 million anyways? That literally defeats the entire purpose behind crowdfunding, and essentially means that everyone that backed the Oculus just pissed (x) amount of money away.

 

[ShakerSilver]

Oh well.

All aboard the Morpheus train!

Yes, let's all get hyped for the cheap knock-off VR headset that runs on closed platform with inferior specs.

 

[Bazaalmon]

I am really not ok with this. Mark Zuckerberg said that he believes that VR is going to be the next great social platform, which to me just seems to scream that gaming is going to be left by the wayside. Everyone keeps saying how the Oculus Rift is the next step in immersion, but how immersive is it going to be when you put it on and suddenly all you see is 50 posts about how "Tom is thinking about buying a new shirt!" and targeted advertisements for If you Like Video Games...

I was really interested in the Oculus Rift, but now I'm going to stay as far away as possible until I see how much Facebook will ruin it.

 

[hentropy]

And just like that, the fad of crowdfunding was ended.

 

[Unknown Warrior]

It shocks me how a company could go full 180° on its audience like that. Trading the reserved, tech-wiz loners for the casual selfie audience. Not to mention going from open platform to a, if Facebook's past transgressions are anything to go by, very-closed platform with ads in mind and has a tendency to call out the lawyers if a remotely similar rears its head.

How will it affect the backers, though?

 

[Andy Chalk]

He's not complaining about it https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack so I assume he was ok with the deal. And his name being attached was certainly what led a lot of people to donate to the Kickstarter.

Carmack joined Oculus VR in August 2013, almost a full year after the Oculus Rift Kickstarter closed. He had absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[DrOswald]

I just can't get mad about this. It is certainly nothing I would have predicted, but that does not make this bad. I mean, the Oculus Rift was never going to be anything but an expensive toy for tech heads before. This buyout brings with it the actual possibility of wide spread distribution and use of VR tech. That means advancement of the hardware and a far greater library of software.

This is probably the best possible thing that could have happened to advance the technology. If you actually believe that VR tech is worth while this is good news.